Instrumentalists Perform at Concerto Competition
Maxine Park, the winner of Exeter’s 2020 Concerto Competition, stunned the Bowld on February 9 with her rendition of Frederic Chopin’s Piano Concerto No, 1 in E minor, Op. 11.
This competition holds special importance to Park, as her father also won it as an upper in 1992. Park first started preparing her piece in the fall with teacher Mila Filatova in Manchester and Professor Alexander Korsantia in Boston. “I love hearing the Chopin E minor concerto so much—I’ve been hearing it since I was very young and have wanted to play it for a long time,” Park said.
The Concerto Competition is an annual event in which students perform a solo work of their choice to a panel of judges. The winner has the opportunity to go on and perform their solo work with an orchestral accompaniment in the spring. This year’s Concerto Competition featured a multitude of instruments, ranging from violin to piano to tuba.
Students selected a pieces from a variety of works, ranging from Mozart’s Flute Concerto No. 1 in G Major to Pablo de Sarasate’s Zigeunerweisen, and were accompanied by pianists HwaYoung An, Silvana Sokolov-Grubb and Lodowick Crofoot.
The competition involves two rounds: a preliminary round and a final round. After preliminaries, 11 students were selected for the final round, in which they performed in front of three judges unaffiliated with the Academy.
Three esteemed musicians were brought to Exeter to judge the competition. First on the panel was critically acclaimed violinist Joanna Kurkowitz, who has performed with orchestras worldwide and currently serves as a concertmistress for the Boston Philharmonic. Kurkowitz was joined by Juilliard alum Joy Cline Phinney, a concert pianist who has collaborated with many different members of prestigious orchestras such as the New York Philharmonic, Cleveland Orchestra and Boston Symphony. Oboist Mary Watt, a member of the Bethlehem Bach Choir and the Quintet of Americas, rounded out the trio.
The Concerto Competition’s focus on solo music provided a unique challenge for the performers. “In a way, [solo] music is seen as the biggest challenge for an instrumentalist to achieve, because the biggest and most dramatic powerful music is often written for a single solo instrument,” Music Instructor Rohan Smith said.
For musicians, competitions, such as the Concerto Competition, are milestone markers for measuring their technical skill and musical development. “Competitions are a big part of starting to achieve a very high level of achievement on a musical instrument,” Smith said. “[Competitions are] one of the ways that musicians strive to reach the absolute top level of achievement.”
After performers played their piece, they were evaluated by the judges on a series of technical criteria. “Competition in the arts is a bit of an oxymoron because the arts are so subjective,” Smith said. “We try to judge based on an overall ranking of a technical command of the instrument, a mature concept of the music and the ability to make an artistic impression in front of an audience.”
In order to achieve such a high level of mastery over their pieces, some of the performers selected works that they had been studying for months. “I started my piece during the summer, and it wasn't specifically being prepared for [the Concerto Competition],” prep violinist Jesalina Phan said. “But I had that piece ready by this time, so I knew that I wanted to play it for the competition.”
Thus, the competition provided an opportunity for students to showcase a piece they had been perfecting diligently. “What we're struck by is how much [students] rise to the occasion and find they have something they didn't know they had before this,” Smith said. “[The competition] absolutely brings out this tremendous level of achievement.”
Similarly, some students found that performing their pieces in front of an audience was a learning experience that went beyond the technical mastery of their pieces. “It's not just about practicing at home,” Phan said. “If you want to be a performer, then you have to practice dealing with nerves.”
Above all, the Concerto Competition was a way for students passionate about music to showcase their hard work and support their peers’ music endeavors. “The Concerto Competition is a great opportunity to perform with awesome musicians,” prep Aubrey Zhang said.